Website providers are increasing the amount of advertising space on their webpages in order to generate more revenues. The advertisements (or ads) appear as banners, blocks, or tiles on various portions on the webpage.
One traditional method to monitor the activity of advertisements of a web page is to send one or more session identifiers in the form of HTTP cookies to a client web browser. Such cookies allows for the tracking of information on the client web browser. However, the client web browser is under no obligation to accept or send back these cookies. Security conscious users deliberately disable cookies from all or some web sites.
In the case where cookies are disabled, the number of visitors may be overcounted by counting the number of new cookies issued. Similarly, the number of visitors may also be undercounted by only counting the number of cookies returned by a number of users who cannot or will not send back cookies. As such, a need therefore exists for a technique to estimate the number of users who cannot or will not send back tracking cookies.